A lot of programmers have been impressed by the ability of ChatGPT, GPT-4, and Bing Chat to write computer programs. Recently, I wrote an article that discusses an elementary programming assignment, called FizzBuzz, which is sometimes used as part of a hiring process to assess a candidate's basic knowledge of
The "Teacher’s Corner" of The American Statistician enables statisticians to discuss topics that are relevant to teaching and learning statistics. Sometimes, the articles have practical relevance, too. Andersson (2023) "The Wald Confidence Interval for a Binomial p as an Illuminating 'Bad' Example," is intended for professors and masters-level students in
A journal article listed the mean, median, and size for subgroups of the data, but did not report the overall mean or median. A SAS programmer wondered what, if any, inferences could be made about the overall mean and median for the data. The answer is that you can calculate
The metalog family of distributions (Keelin, Decision Analysis, 2016) is a flexible family that can model a wide range of continuous univariate data distributions when the data-generating mechanism is unknown. This article provides an overview of the metalog distributions. A subsequent article shows how to download and use a library
The moments of a continuous probability distribution are often used to describe the shape of the probability density function (PDF). The first four moments (if they exist) are well known because they correspond to familiar descriptive statistics: The first raw moment is the mean of a distribution. For a random
Many modern statistical techniques incorporate randomness: simulation, bootstrapping, random forests, and so forth. To use the technique, you need to specify a seed value, which determines pseudorandom numbers that are used in the algorithm. Consequently, the seed value also determines the results of the algorithm. In theory, if you know
Here's a fun problem to think about: Suppose that you have two different valid ways to test a statistical hypothesis. For a given sample, will both tests reject or fail to reject the hypothesis? Or might one test reject it whereas the other does not? The answer is that two
Recall that the binomial distribution is the distribution of the number of successes in a set of independent Bernoulli trials, each having the same probability of success. Most introductory statistics textbooks discuss the approximation of the binomial distribution by the normal distribution. The graph to the right shows that the
A reader asked whether it is possible to find a bootstrap sample that has some desirable properties. I am using the term "bootstrap sample" to refer to the result of randomly resampling with replacement from a data set. Specifically, he wanted to find a bootstrap sample that has a specific
People love rankings. You've probably seen articles about the best places to live, the best colleges to attend, the best pizza to order, and so on. Each of these is an example of a ranking that is based on multiple characteristics. For example, a list of the best places to
